The Commemoration of Dietrich BonhoefferOffered at Noonday Prayer, April 9, 2016

The reading we just heard comes right smack dab from the middle of Matthew’s Gospel account. At this point in the story - as Matthew tells it - we’ve heard Jesus’ birth narrative and the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve seen some miraculous healings and exorcisms, and on at least one occasion, we have seen a little child raised from the dead. Jesus’ increasingly arresting teachings – and jaw-dropping miracles – have now begun to draw more and more the attention from those in positions of worldly power and religious authority. Tensions are mounting. An awful lot of what Jesus is saying and doing is a direct challenge to the status quo. The big guys don’t like that.

This emerging conflict – between the Gospel message of Jesus and the powers and principalities of the day – is coming right out into broad daylight in the little passage we just heard – and it’s happening as Jesus insists on using a word and image that especially threatens those powers that be. It’s the word “kingdom” – a word that Jesus uses over fifty times in Matthew’s Gospel, and fully twelve times in the chapter we read from this morning.

Jesus is “coming out” here as one who proclaims a new, alternative and radically different “kingdom” that either the one proclaimed by the ruling government or the religious establishment of the day …

And that proclamation – that Good News that folks can be part of a different kind of kingdom in this life – is enough to strike fear and fury into the hearts and minds of all kinds of witnesses to this moment. That Good News is enough – by the end of this story – to lead to the betrayal, passion and death of the Lord.

So what does this kingdom look like? What is Jesus saying and doing that is so upsetting to the powers that be? Well this group will hardly be surprised!

- He advocates for peace in the midst of a culture of violence.

- He advocates for integrity in worship, service and mission, in the midst of a culture of religious hypocrisy.

- He preaches hope and potential in the face of even the most extreme poverty, disease, persecution and death.

- He insists over and over again that every human being is to be honored, cherished and loved … that there is no sin which cannot be forgiven … that there is no place on earth we can journey, where God is not present …

- And he puts it squarely on our shoulders – the beloved children of God – to embrace these truths and this reality … and to take our place with him to create a whole new kind of kingdom in this here and now.

This is God’s call to us as the church, and as disciples of Jesus, even to this very day: the call to be hopeful, forgiving, celebratory and loving people no matter what. “The credibility of the Gospel is contingent upon our sacrificial love for one another,” says the theologian Richard Hayes:

If outsiders do not see in the Christian community love of another kind, there is no reason for them to attend to the message that God loved the world so much that he sent his Son to rescue it. The visible truth of the Gospel hangs upon our visible counterculture of love.

Today we remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran Pastor and theologian born in Poland in 1906, and who was active in ministry in Germany as a young adult during Hitler’s rise to power and the Second World War. Bonhoeffer’s biography and writings are as compelling as those of any modern Christian disciple, without exception. Confronted with incarnate evil – and the reality of a Christian Church abdicating its responsibility to name that evil and fight against it – Bonhoeffer took up his cross and followed Christ.

He stayed in Germany when he could easily have escaped.

He wrote and published widely about the evil of the Third Reich and failure of the Church to live into Christ’s mission by opposing that regime.

He took action – first through political means to seek Hitler’s overthrow, and later – after a deep examination of conscience – as part of a failed plot to take Hitler’s life.

Among other things Bonhoeffer is remembered for saying, “When Christ calls a man he bids him, come and die.”

Indeed – his prophetic, Christian voice was too much for the powers and principalities of his day to bear. Bonhoeffer was ultimately arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned, first at Buchenwald – and later at Flossenberg. He was hanged on this day – April 9, 1945 - at the age of 39. The camp where he was imprisoned was liberated just two weeks later.

When Christ calls us he bids us come and die.

It is unlikely any of us will be asked to risk our physical lives for the sake of the Gospel. We’re just plain lucky to have been born in the safest and wealthiest country & age in just about all of recorded human history. But I want to tell you my brothers and sisters that the kind of life to which Jesus calls us as disciples – the kind of visible, sacrificial and countercultural love to which we are bid as his followers - can ONLY be offered at great cost. And the Gospel that bears and empowers that love? It is just as threatening to the powers and principalities of this world today, as it was in 1945.

You are preparing here for ordained Christian ministry – and if you do this thing faithfully and well, you will pay a price.

There will be times friendships are strained because it is your job to name and fight prejudices of every sort, even in the people you love. This is what it means to seek out the image of Christ in all people and to respect the dignity of every human being.

There will be times when you get angry because you are placed under the authority of Christ in the community of the larger Church and the person of a Bishop – you will inevitably be asked to drink from some cup you’d rather see pass … to make a sacrifice that you would rather not make.

There will be times when you pay a price even in your very private life. It is hard, in fact, to “pattern your life and that of your family in accordance with the teachings of Jesus.” It’s likely there are things you’ll need to clean up in order to do this work faithfully - to be a wholesome example to the larger community.

And I do not discount the possibility that this generation – that you and I - might be called to follow in the footsteps of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and fight against political, corporate and military interests. Interests that are increasingly and boldly pretending to walk a Christian path, while they are in point of fact, bringing evil to incarnate life in demagoguery, greed, violence, oppression and militarism unlike anything we’ve seen in a very long time.

Bonhoeffer’s last known words were spoken to a fellow prisoner when Bonhoeffer was summoned by a guard towards his execution. He said, “This is the end. For me, the beginning of life.”

I could go on, but what I hope you will hear and take away from this meditation is the reminder that being a disciple – being a participant in building Christ’s kingdom - demands surrender, sacrifice … and a willingness to be constantly open to growth and change as Christ shapes you more and more into the person God created you to be.

AND that amazingly – miraculously even – being a disciple also means enjoying a life and a vocation of deep meaning, purpose, and the real joy that goes with all that. Being a disciple means life and life abundant even as we journey to and through death. It is a blessing and grace beyond measure – believe me – to do this thing.

Be God’s kingdom-builders beloved. Go: be the hopeful, forgiving and loving people God created and calls you to be. Go be the Church. Go change the world.

Amen.+ J.S. Barker

﻿﻿The Bishop Kemper School for Ministry is a collaborative venture of the Episcopal Dioceses of Kansas, West Missouri, Nebraska and Western Kansas.It offers classes and programs to educate people for church leadership in both lay and ordained vocations.